WASHINGTON, D.C. — With President Barack Obama’s first term characterized by strained relations between Pakistan and the U.S., more than nine in 10 Pakistanis (92%) disapprove of U.S. leadership and 4% approve, the lowest approval rating Pakistanis have ever given.

Pakistanis’ approval of the leadership of their ostensible ally, the United States, has historically been quite low. However, perceptions began to change, albeit modestly, through much of Obama’s first term. As recently as May 2011, 27% of Pakistanis approved of U.S. leadership, the apex of support. Noticeably, approval declined after the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, carried out by the U.S. military without the assistance of the Pakistani military — an event that many Pakistanis viewed as a blatant disregard for Pakistani sovereignty.

These findings are based on a survey conducted from Sept. 30-Oct. 16, 2012, in Pakistan. The survey directly followed massive demonstrations against the release of an anti-Muslim film made in the U.S.

Concurrently, Pakistanis now more than at any other time in the past three years feel threatened by interaction with the West, according to a May 12-June 6, 2012, survey. A majority (55%) say interaction between Muslim and Western societies is ‘more of a threat,’ up significantly […]

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The U.S Senate has renewed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), with 78 votes in favor and 22 against. According to Think Progress, all of the 22 votes against renewing the Act were Republican men, including rising GOP star, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R).

Republicans had threatened to obstruct VAWA, which is renewed every five years, over new provisions that would enshrine protections for LGBT people, immigrants and women on Native American reservations into the law. House Republicans proposed their own, watered down version of the legislation in 2012, but the House and Senate, unable to reconcile their versions of the legislation, allowed the VAWA to expire for the first time since its inception.

The VAWA was first passed in 1994 to address violence against women through stiffer sentences for violent perpetrators, guaranteeing women access to civil proceedings should prosecutors decline to press charges in a domestic violence case and by otherwise buttressing protections for women within the law. It was renewed without controversy in 2000 and 2005, but came up against Republican resistance this year.

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) each attempted to tack amendments on to the Act that would annul the protections for undocumented immigrants, Native Americans […]

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Some of the nation’s biggest corporations donated more than a million dollars to launch a Republican nonprofit that went on to play a key role in recent political fights.

Like the nonprofit groups that poured money into last year’s elections, the decade-old State Government Leadership Foundation has been able to keep the identities of its funders secret. Until now.

A records request by ProPublica to the IRS turned up a list of the original funders of the group: Exxon, Pfizer, Time Warner, and other corporations put up at least 85 percent of the $1.3 million the foundation raised in the first year and a half of its existence, starting in 2003.

The donor list is stamped ‘not for public disclosure,

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Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising ‘wedge issue’ for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

Koch Industries Executive Vice President David H. Koch : Funding climate change deniers The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.

‘We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,’ she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the […]

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Vastly different species of sea microbes work together to respond as one to their surroundings as if they have one ‘megamind’, new research has revealed.

U.S. researchers have discovered communities of infinitesimal creatures in our oceans react in unison to changes in their environment.

The links between them are not well understood, but findings suggest the creatures rely on each other to almost the same extent as the different cells in a human body.

Megamind: Despite the amazing diversity of marine microbes, a new research paper shows that many different groups work together to react in unison to their surroundings

As an example, if one set of the microbes were, say, creating energy through photosynthesis, which would then produce carbon dioxide, another set of microbes would somehow know and react – perhaps preparing to absorb the carbon dioxide.

The open sea contains an amazing diversity of extremely tiny organisms called picoplankton, which include relatively simple life forms such as marine bacteria, as well as more complicated organisms.

Microbiologists who study wild marine microbes, as opposed to the lab-grown variety, face enormous challenges in getting a clear picture of the daily activities of their subjects.

To take a look at these creatures in their natural habitat, researchers from […]

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